This image, acquired on 28 October by Envisat, shows central Saudi Arabia on the arid Arabian Peninsula.

Most of Saudi Arabia has a desert climate and experiences extremely high temperatures, sometimes reaching up to 50°C in the summer. Click the image above to read the full story.

Where is Envisat?

Envisat flies in a sun-synchronous polar orbit of about 800-km altitude. The repeat cycle of the reference orbit is 35 days, and for most sensors, being wide swath, it provides a complete coverage of the globe within one to three days.

Click on the image below to see where Envisat is positioned over the Earth right now.

Envisat Images of the Earth

Envisat orbits our planet every 100 minutes and is speeding along at more than seven kilometres per second. While on this journey Envisat captures stunning imagery of the Earth & the events happening all around us.

The gallery below is a small selection of the latest images from Envisat. The images featured range from deserts to rivers, mountains and lakes.

Envisat captures all this in high resolution detail giving us a better understanding of the Earth and it's environment.

Please click on the thumbnails below to see the full resolution images and the news stories that acompany them.

Stratospheric ozone is a key element in the study of the earth system. The analyses from IUP at Bremen monitor the behavior of the "ozone hole" and mid-latitude ozone as halogen loading of the stratosphere reaches its maximum. The analyses exploit the limb measurement mode where tropospheric column amounts of ozone can be determined.

About Sciamachy: The SCIAMACHY instrument was proposed in 1988 by J. P. Burrows et al. After a feasibility study (phase A) in 1989-1990 led by Dornier and Fokker as prime contractors, SCIAMACHY was selected for flight by the European Space Agency (ESA) as an "Announcement of Opportunity" instrument. Subsequently a definition study (phase B) was carried out between 1991 and mid 1992. Meanwhile, the manufacturing phase (phase C/D) was completed. SCIAMACHY was then delivered to ESA and mounted on-board ENVISAT.

Generally, sea level is higher than average in the northern hemisphere in July and August when waters are warmed by more direct solar radiation and is lower than average in February and March when the incoming solar flux reduces.

These sea level anomalies maps derive from a combination of data coming from altimeters on-bord Jason-1 and Envisat. Combining data from several satellites gives a better space/time resolution, thus enabling a better mesoscale circulation observation. More information can be found at Aviso.

As part of the operational delivery of Envisat data to users, the quicklooks are combined from the catalogue system to build global coverage maps. The tool uses rigorous rectification methods, building mosaics on-the-fly, and can process 200 quicklooks per request.

These can be produced from the AATSR, ASAR and MERIS instruments aboard Envisat.

Images in HD quality taken by the optical and radar instruments on board ESA's Envisat Satellite orbiting 800 km above the Earth are set to relaxing music. Originally produced for Lufthansa inflight entertainment (released December 2010)